Dear loyal Flingers,

We have just celebrated our first anniversary and now we are looking into the future. During this period we got a lot of loyal flingers and we love you all for staying with us during this sometimes rocky road.

As you have noticed in the past few days and weeks, there have been a few changes to our site and to the running times of some of our offerings.

As a growing company we have been working very hard to bring new customers/flingers to our website; without alienating our existing customers. We want to continue offering outstanding value to our loyal flingers as well as bring in lots of new members to our ever-expanding community.

We understand that some of the changes have not pleased some of you, such as removing the time-remaining feature. But let us remind you that in the meantime, our regular customers can take advantage of the “Widget” which will help you keep track of the upcoming flings. The link for our widget can be found on our home page.

In order to get new customers, we must run larger quantities of products, and for longer periods of time. The reason for this is fairly basic. It just takes time for the deals to sort of “propagate” on the internet. For better or worse almost all the initial orders are from folks like you…our existing customers. It is in the following periods that we see newbies join and\or buy. I wish it was different, but it isn’t.

We desperately want to keep our current members happy, but as the saying goes, “That which does not grow, perishes,” so there has to be a compromise.

If we run an item for too long we make some people unhappy. If we run items for short periods of time, but repeat them to move larger quantities, others are unhappy.

Regular DOD sites need to find less than 365 different products a year. Including special event days and repeats, even that is difficult. (How many different Roombas does a person really need)? Thing Fling is proud to say that we have offered a good variety of products in our first year. Additionally, almost all the other sites effectively shut down when they sell out their item of the day!!!

We are a huge wholesale company. We buy big quantities (really BIG quantities) and sell them at cheap prices. That`s what we do best. We buy in quantities very few can match. Our business is to buy a lot and sell cheap. We are not marketing pro`s, nor do we have any internet programming savvy. Hey, there are days we can barely write English!! Those have been the days that we have survived with only great support from our community.

So here are some ideas, but I really need some feedback from you guys and gals.

1) Timer every other day?
2) Timer for part of the day?
3) Automated email or text message as a new item comes up on the site?
4) A new item everyday for the first 12 hours and then the repeats?

We want to give you a great member experience, so please post a response or feel free to send me a PM.

I know from the help that we have already received from some of you, that there are experts in both programming and marketing among our communities. Please feel free to offer your services to us. And no you do not have to work for free,,,,,unless you want to!!!

Do you have an idea of any kind? Let us know! (PM us or use the Helpdesk)

Do you have a product to sell? Contact us!

Thanks for everything so far, and watch for some great things over the upcoming months!!!!

I like the idea of a an email or text message when a new item appears......and I like the idea of a new item the first 12 hours. I love Thing Fling!!!

ok...how about a timer towards the ending of an item so there is an idea of when the next item will be coming up...or if the quantity is getting low..show a quantity left area so we know the next item is coming up soon..or both??? Kind of like a Last Chance signal letting everyone know to grab it now before it's gone.

I cast my vote for option #4

I'd probably prefer an email when a new item posts. That way I'll at least know when it started.

Secondly, I think the yahoo widget could be improved immensely.
I'd like to see the icon on the dock sequentially flash the item picture, the name, the price, and time left if that is an option.

Take a look at the "yahoo! stock ticker" and "radar (you pick it) II" for proof of concept.

I would love to see an RSS feed that works like the others I have set up in Firefox. My other feeds send a new message when something new comes up. Yours has to be clicked on every time, and there is no way of knowing that there is a new fling up without clicking on it. I tried the Yahoo Widget, but it was annoying and further decreased the speed on my older computer.

Dear King,

A thought kept crossing my mind while I read your post, so I would like to offer another idea that I feel provides a compromise that is more of a "you get both" solutions. Although granted this would probably demand more work on your alls part.

TF could go dual-listing! A shadow listing as it were... For example the main listing would remain as it is now, no timer, no quantities left, and items stay up for a long time, and perhaps this listing would introduce all the new items that come up for deals. But the "shadow" listing would be a 2nd listing viewable only by registered flingers, or say those who have flung 5 or more flings, o r something like that. And the shadow listing would be more like the old deal--quantities left box/and or timer, and items change fairly frequently. This way you got the slow main listing which can sit all day and atteract new members galore. And then you have the shadow listing which established members can also peruse and get their many deals a day fix as per the norm. With added bonus: people might sign up just to be able to see the shadow listing...

Otherwise my vote is on the half a day dealy. I think SMS or email notification would be nice, and perhaps it should be doe anyway but it is not a big deal to me personally, because I use a DOTD tracker program on my PC (Wooalyzer which instantly opens the product page every time TF puts up a new item for example. I guess thats another option you know? Like you could promote such software or even just provide a link somewhere.

I would suggest you run the time the last two hours. This will allow you time to get new customers, and we folks that have supported your startup effort only have to check back every couple of hours.

Same idea I had so of course I like it!

I also like the shadow listing idea!